Lexington’s African American Heritage Walking Tour
Join us for an on-demand walking tour of Downtown Lexington’s African American heritage sites.
Join us for an on-demand walking tour of Downtown Lexington’s African American heritage sites.
Explore topics related to Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math (STEAM) in this space for youth, grades 3-12.
Learn how the Lexington Public Library Foundation empowers change within our library system.
Learn or develop a personal or professional skill with LinkedIn Learning classes, available for free with your library card.
Did you know physical materials renew automatically if they don’t have a waiting list? Check your account online to see the status of your items.
All locations will be closed on Tuesday, December 24, and Wednesday, December 25, for Christmas.
In 1768, Lewis Craig and other members of the Spotsylvania Baptist Church were arrested for preaching without a license issued by the Church of England. Their case was later defended by Patrick Henry.
To free his congregation from what he felt was religious persecution, and to capitalize on the opportunities of available land in the area, Craig formed the Traveling Church and brought his entire congregation through the frontier to Kentucky and established Bryan's Station Baptist Church. As the church grew too large for one meeting space, it formed David's Fork Baptist Church in Fayette County in 1801. The church built a new space in 1857, where they still hold services.
The pamphlet is part of the library's collection in the Kentucky Room.
Information from At the Meetinghouse on David's Fork: a History of David's Fork, 1891-2001 by Randy Smith, 2001.
Description coming soon.
Destination Kindergarten is the library’s program aimed at preschoolers and their caregivers- trying to help them practice the skills they need to be ready for Kindergarten. During each Destination Kindergarten event, preschoolers and their caregivers can find a specalized area in the library with fun books, take-home activities, and information about development milestones and school readiness.
See below for more information on upcoming events and take-home packets and activities.
Lexington Public Library Donations Received January 1, 2023 - December 31, 2023
Description coming soon.
All Lexington Public Library locations are closed on these holidays.
Library meeting rooms are available for individuals, non-profit, for profit, study groups, and community organizations seeking to hold meetings, trainings, and workshops. Meeting rooms are free of charge. Sterno and other tools/equipment that have an open flame are prohibited.
Monday-Thursday: 9:30am-7:00pm
Friday: 9:30am-6:00pm
Saturday: 9:30am-5:00pm
Sunday: 1:00pm-5:00pm
140 East Main Street
Lexington, KY 40507
Monday-Thursday: 9:30am-7:00pm
Friday: 9:30am-6:00pm
Saturday: 9:30am-5:00pm
Sunday: 1:00pm-5:00pm
3000 Blake James Drive
Lexington, KY 40509
Lexington, Kentucky (August 18, 2022) – The Lexington Public Library broke ground on a new, significantly larger facility in the former Village Branch location on Versailles Road to better provide for the needs of the neighborhoods it serves. The new branch will reflect the community’s vision for a state-of-the-art community hub, one that offers robust resources and a myriad of program and service offerings. The groundbreaking ceremony was held on Tuesday at a media event featuring Library and City officials.
All databases are available from this page.
Shawntaye Hopkins is the Marketing and Communications Director at the University of Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law. Before landing at the University of Kentucky, Shawntaye worked as a newspaper reporter, a public relations specialist at another university, and as a communications associate for a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization serving state governments. Shawntaye has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Western Kentucky University. Her hobbies include reading and writing about books, mostly fiction.
Tina Belle Green Winters Simpler Young (1880-1930), was born in Elmville, Kentucky. Known as Tiny, she was believed to be a sex worker in the 1920s and 30s, and sent $5.00 a week home to support her sister. For a time she worked in the Crawl section of Frankfort, then she moved to Lexington, and finally lived the rest of her life in Cincinnati. The queerness of sex work, a marginalized woman using sex to support family, provides context both to this collection bearing her name and to the LGBTQ+ community that has historically formed families on the sexual margins.
Jennifer Bird-Pollan is the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and the Judge William T. Lafferty Professor of Law at the University of Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law. She has a B.A. from Penn State University, a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Vanderbilt University, and a J.D.
Join us for a walking tour of Lexington's Historic Lexington Cemetery. The full tour is available as a single MP3, or you can download individual tracks. For the single MP3, music will play between the stops. You can pause the track while you walk between stops.
This tour covers a walking distance of approximately 1.5 miles.
Please note: You will be walking on paths also used by cars. Please take special care to watch and listen for approaching vehicles.
The music clips used in this tour are from “Walking Barefoot on Grass” by Kai Engel, and are used with a CCBY license. It is available here: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Kai_Engel/
Fayette County churches contain some of the earliest records and information preserved about central Kentucky history. The digital archive contents include church ledgers, minutes, directories, and informational brochures.
Wonderful podcasts and walking tours have been created by our staff. Please enjoy!